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Palo Alto's newest hotel, Epiphany, opens downtown

Hotel on Hamilton wired to serve Silicon Valley travelers

The Epiphany, a new hotel on Hamilton Avenue, opened on March 10, 2014. Photo by Veronica Weber.

The first in a spate of planned Palo Alto hotels -- the Epiphany -- debuted Monday, March 10, at 180 Hamilton Ave. in downtown.

The eight-story-tall Epiphany Hotel, operated by the company Joie de Vivre Hotel, features 86 guest rooms and suites. But in addition, according to Joie de Vivre, it is designed to meet the needs of Silicon Valley's work/play lifestyle, including in-room complimentary high-speed Internet access; fully wired mezzanine-level meeting and co-working spaces; and four rooftop hospitality suites with meeting and living areas, family-style dining tables and floor-to-ceiling windows with views of Stanford University's Hoover Tower and the Santa Cruz Mountains, the company stated.

"We are thrilled to open our doors in such a vibrant and entrepreneurial community, with the spirit of Palo Alto reflected in our collaborative and intuitively designed spaces," General Manager Lorenz Maurer stated. "We hope to inspire our guests and neighbors with curated experiences that evoke intrigue, curiosity and productivity, making The Epiphany Hotel a dynamic home base for business or pleasure in the heart of Silicon Valley."

Joie de Vivre Hotels of San Francisco operates more than 30 hotels.

Until 2009, the building was Casa Olga, a residence for disabled and elderly people, and was best recognized by its six-story-tall mosaic mural of El Palo Alto, the thousand-year-old coastal redwood that gave the city its name. The building at the corner of Hamilton and Emerson Street was rebuilt under the direction of Palo Alto-based Steinberg Architects and McCartan Interior Design, who aimed to give the hotel the same "sleek yet warm" look of Joie de Vivre's Hotel Vitale, in San Francisco, the press release stated.

Each hotel room is equipped with complimentary Internet access, a G-Link dock for streaming movies and games from any mobile device to a large-screen Samsung TV, an ergonomic desk chair, honor bar and dry bar, and Illy espresso maker. Guest rooms and suites are furnished with amenities, including Sausalito-based Fred water presented in flask-shaped bottles that can be refilled in the hotel lobby.

In addition to a traditional hotel concierge, the Epiphany is employing a technology concierge.

The hotel worked with Palo Alto design firm IDEO to create The Accelerator work lounge and Tinderbox boardroom on the mezzanine level, which is intended to be used as an open, collaborative environment, the press release stated.

On the ground floor, an 80-seat indoor-outdoor restaurant and bar, Lure + Till, will be led by Patrick Kelly, previously executive chef at Gitane in San Francisco and Michelin-starred Angèle in Napa.

The last hotel to open in Palo Alto -- in 2010 -- was Hotel Keen, a 42-room boutique hotel at 425 High St. downtown catering to younger adult travelers.

Hotels still planned or under construction include a Hilton Homewood Suites, at the site of the former Palo Alto Bowl on El Camino Real; a Hilton Garden Inn, also on El Camino, just south of Arastradero Road; and a hotel at the site of Ming's restaurant near the Palo Alto Baylands.

Posted by musical
a resident of Palo Verde
on Mar 10, 2014 at 10:59 am

The building went up in 1975, so I guess that's when the no-parking approval happened. Maybe people will arrive in cars with pink mustaches. Or more likely airport limos. They do indicate valet parking, who knows where. I was surprised that room rates show as low as $239 in the near term. Jump to $700 on Commencement weekend. I don't know how we'll ever figure out how to spend all that TOT that will be coming in.

Posted by Sparty
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Mar 10, 2014 at 11:41 am

Sure are a lot of clueless commenters here who apparently have missed the train after train after train after train after train that pulls up and lets of people with their luggage at the Caltrain station.

Posted by Sparty
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Mar 10, 2014 at 12:04 pm

Silly-- do all the hotels in SF-- including the JDV have parking? Do you make a habit of taking all your luggage with you on vacation or business? Who holds it for you? The receptionist?

Did you miss the taxis all over Palo Alto? Heck there's even people taking taxis to grocery stores. I know this would be the first time EVER that taxis travel to and from a hotel, but hey, Silicon Valley is an innovator.

Posted by Silly
a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Mar 10, 2014 at 12:31 pm

Sparty, as a matter of fact I did leave my luggage with the company receptionist when I was routinely doing business in Washington, DC. I'd check out of my hotel in the morning, go to the company and put in a full day and then catch the 5PM flight back to SFO. I even took taxis to/from the airports.

Many SF hotels have parking garages and/or valet parking.

Many PA hotels -- the Garden Court on Cowper, the Westin and its neighbor on El Camino etc. -- all have highly profitable parking garages and/or paid parking lots for their guests and their guests' visitors.

The point is that PA traffic is becoming so bad that people routinely comment on it to strangers and plan their days to avoid the worst of it. The city knows about the huge parking problem DOWNTOWN and still did its usual nothing.

Posted by What's right?
a resident of Midtown
on Mar 10, 2014 at 12:48 pm

An entire building of elderly and disabled people lost not only their long-time homes but their community, which was subsequently replaced with a luxury hotel that is using the same building. This transition provides business for Epiphany, hotel taxes for the City, work for IDEO, etc....but was this a moral action - to evict relatively helpless people with few options (and little political power) to make room for a luxury hotel firm to operate? I'm not sure exactly how this happened...but I am sure that, as a long-time Palo Alto resident, I don't feel comfortable with it.

I would be very interested to read thoughts on this issue from other Palo Alto residents. Are Palo Alto's values changing? Are we doing the right things as a City? What portion of our economic and political resources should be used to help the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the homeless? What are our responsibilities? How do we choose to conduct ourselves as a City? Can we feel proud of the way our City is acting towards the least fortunate in our midst?

Posted by Robert
a resident of another community
on Mar 10, 2014 at 12:53 pm

Hey Silly, if guests don't like the traffic or have a need to park a car, prepare to have your mind blown, there's more than one hotel in Palo Alto! Clearly people are being *forced* to stay here, as made evident by $700 a night prices...

If you want to keep living in the past, might I suggest a rust belt city? Cleveland? Detroit? No traffic, plenty of parking, and no need to worry about those pesky developers who want to let new people move into your community.

Posted by Silly
a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Mar 10, 2014 at 1:19 pm

Sparty, ok. You don't like the poor or homeless or elderly or the local merchants.

How about shame on those people with their $2,000,000+ homes and condos downtown who stupidly believe their $20,000 or so annual property taxes entitle them to a parking space somewhere near their homes?

If we're going to lose most of our amenities as a city where we often can't even back out of our driveways, maybe our taxes SHOULD be on par with the Rust Belt cities.

Forget the poor and disabled! Ship them off to Modesto with all of the minorities who don't know how to code!

Born and raised in PA and I am absolutely disgusted by the shift in priorities and values. Not even a shift, more of a hostile takeover by the tech elites. Do these people really not care about the people they are affecting? Social Darwinism to an extreme. Google and FB should have mandatory empathy and emotional intelligence training.

Robert, yes you are correct! But if you realize how much of an impact these companies are having on the previous communities they should be doing MORE! They owe it to the communities they are gentrifying and the multi generational families they are pushing out. I understand that these tech companies have no direct connection to the hotel but they ARE the reason for its opening and the displacement of the disabled and poor residents. Therefore they should say "hey, you know what, a lot of people REALLY hate us and we are clearly having a negative impact on some people, so we are going to do something good, like help plan and improve public transportation for the entire Bay Area, that way we can all live in greater harmony".

It's baffling the way these companies ignore anyone living outside of their "campus". And no giving kids a free pass in muni does not solve anything. If you're going to "rape and pillage" look at past examples and do it differently.

Posted by Silly
a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Mar 10, 2014 at 3:57 pm

While we're on PA values, did you all read the article in the SJ Mercury News on how backed up all the demolition guys are scraping the $1,000,000 homes to build bigger homes? Last year PA lost more than 80 older homes, including some really beautiful Birge Clark houses to put up 8-bedroom McMansions with HUGE windows overlooking the neighbor's equally tiny lots, the same as the previous few years with more yet to come.

I guess the new owners think they're building those huge homes with huge windows in the rural woods. Or they just like giving people a thrill when they run downstairs in their undies to get their morning coffee. More money than brains.

Casa Olga financially collapsed in 2009 owing to "state budget cuts and a bureaucracy that delayed payments for services to patients for six months or longer" according to an Aug 21, 2009 article in Palo Alto online. So it's not as though the nasty, capitalist pig hoteliers evicted the old people. The hotel simply saw an oppurtunity to use a vacant building.

Posted by Garrett
a resident of another community
on Mar 10, 2014 at 4:08 pm

Why should Facebook, Google or Apple worry about housing, I am sure they will pay someone to build, or pay their employees more to live here. This is why we have land developers, they building housing, stores and oh yes hotels.

A person could come in with money and build anything they want, this is called filling a need. Yes it seems we do have a need for $239 to $700 hotels rooms, or eat $100 dinners.

People who purchased their homes for $500,000 now can see the old family home for $2,000,000, the take your money and drive up the costs someplace else. Yes this does happen.

This is why certain places hate people coming in with millions, snapping up the real estate, needed the same services as they have in Palo Alto.

Here is an idea, lets control what people can buy or not buy, what businesses can charge, limit products, goods and services. Control what businesses you can open, limit the amount of capital, don't bother trying to attract workers, people with brains or the idea to start anything.

This hotel was approved as a different, they probably pay somebody to use their parking lot. I am sure most people are using a hire a car (limo or taxi), or some other means.

Good points all. I guess my biggest concern is the total disregard for community this tech boom has brought us. Isn't this worth fighting for? Don't you want to have a relationship with your neighbor? Your neighbor who cleans the school where your child attends? Or would you prefer that custodian be shipped in from the Central Valley 2 hours commuting each way building a strong resentment for you and your child while they clean up their feces.

Building that human connection is vital to a strong community. Enclosing a severed utopian community that only exists on a tech campus does nothing for the surrounding communities! Just look at the police office FB just hired?? WTF? What will happen when FB moves and the community loses that office Zuck had been paying for??

Techies need to learn how to have some heart and not just say " well if they were smart enough they would be able to live here". Disgusting approach to life.

Bob,
Your humane concerns are totally valid and admirable, and mixing the socioeconomic classes in one zip code is probably an ideal way to foster an empathetic community. But I think that ship has sailed in this community and many other attractive places on the planet and I can't think up a practical real solution for it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an unguarded moment of candor early in his administration, said that, “If New York City is a business, it isn’t Wal-Mart—it isn’t trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market. It’s a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product." That was an honest assessment that applies as well or better to (much smaller) Palo Alto. When a place becomes very attractive to wealthy people, it becomes impractical/unaffordable in the extreme to keep it socioeconomically mixed.

Posted by resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Mar 10, 2014 at 5:00 pm

The Hotel has no parking. It is in the Downtown Parking Assessment District. It is very difficult to understand exactly what assessment the Hotel is actually paying as in-lieu fees to the District under the converted use to Epiphany Hotel.

Posted by Inept City Council
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Mar 10, 2014 at 6:49 pm

Where are the cars, limos and taxis that are unloading hotel guests in front of the hotel going to park? Are they going to double park in front of the hotel as they unload the luggage? There doesn't appear to be any area to accommodate these cars. That is going to create quite a traffic jam at that corner. We can thank our city council for creating yet another parking problem for our town.

Posted by litebug
a resident of another community
on Mar 10, 2014 at 10:31 pm

former 38 year resident of P.A.

I kept scrolling down down down trying to find some remark about the people who were displaced by this luxury hotel. Took me a long while to find a mention or two of the effects on them.

From what I read here everything that had been increasingly troublesome about a town I formerly loved for decades, has mestastisized since we moved to Oregon in 2008. Nothing I hear about Palo Alto makes me interested to even return for a visit. I miss the Santa Cruz mountains, coastside and the towns over there but not Palo Alto nor Silicon Valley. A total rat race for very well paid self centered rats. I'm glad I knew it in its heyday when it was a really great place to live.

Posted by Neilson Buchanan
a resident of Downtown North
on Mar 11, 2014 at 9:19 am

The hotel's parking issues are twofold. First, the hotel has contracted for up to 40 parking places underneath the Lytton Gardens facility on Everett...entry via back of that building thru parking lots. Experience will reveal if this is enough parking for overnight guests. There is no known contingency if demand exceeds 40 valet parking spaces.

What about infrequent peak periods such as big game? Probably demand far in excess of 40 parking spaces. City government will monitor the adequacy of hotel's valet program for overnight guests as conditions of hotel's valet parking permit.

Second issue is parking for restaurant patrons and hotel employees. These patrons and employees will add to the competition for fixed parking supply within the commercial core and onto residential streets. The hotel is just one of four new developments to be opening on Hamilton Ave alone. None of these projects has sufficient on-site parking and will add to the competition for parking spaces.

Bottom line, they just added about 100 cars a day to the parking mess. It looks like they pay the parking assesment district for 92 nonexistent parking places. All approved by our CC, based on Casa Olga needs in 1975.

Posted by resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Mar 11, 2014 at 11:16 am

@Neilson re parking
What about the assessments for in-lieu payment to the Parking Assessment
District? Do you have knowledge of this? Can you sort this sort out as to what Joie de Vivre is actually paying the District? Casa Olga had a reduction or "reimbursement" for 117 spaces of the original requirement of 200 spaces less 5 provided on site due to it's use as a care facility leaving 78. Epiphany took out the 5 on-site spaces and converted it to an 86 room Hotel/restaurant. A May 2012 staff report refers to an arrangement
pertaining to this but it is not clear to me. As an 86 room Hotel and restaurant what would the parking requirement be and what is Epiphany being
assessed for?

Posted by Deep Throat
a resident of another community
on Mar 11, 2014 at 11:32 am

The use of Lytton Gardens IV's parking on Everett Avenue for this hotel described above by Neilson Buchanan was not known at the time the City Council refused to consider Ken Alsman's appeal of the hotel project on July 23, 2012. Parking for the hotel is not an approved permitted or conditional use for the senior housing project's Planned Community zone district (PC 4053) (Web Link): “(a) The permitted only use shall be housing for low and very low income seniors, and accessory uses incidental thereto” ... “(b) No uses shall be permitted in this zone other than that use specified in paragraph (a)”

Did the Director of Planning and Community Environment approve a minor amendment to the PC zone district regulations for PC 4053 without providing constructive notice to the public? If so, was it legal to consider the amendment minor to avoid a zone change that requires public hearings before the City Council and the Planning and Transportation Commission? Was there even an application filed to amend PC 4053 to allow the parking at the Everett Avenue project?

It is demagogic and factually erroneous to claim that this new hotel is displacing anyone. Check your facts. This very website reported in August, 2009 that:

"The eight-story building adorned with the giant mosaic of El Palo Alto at the corner of Emerson Street and Hamilton Avenue is the latest victim of state budget cuts and a bureaucracy that delayed payments for services to patients for six months or longer, according to its owners.

Weary of the struggle with government and now in their 70s, the four partners who built and managed the building since it opened in 1975 have finally given up and will close the intermediate health care facility in the coming weeks. All 88 residents will be moved to other facilities, homes or will be returned to the care of their families, Wanda Ginner, a board member and co-owner, said."

Those of you lamenting the loss of low income housing - blaming the new hotel owner/business is neither accurate or truthful. It's well documented as to why Casa Olga folded (state budget cuts and delayed payments from the state)...the new hotel had absolutely nothing to do with it. The hotel did not evict anyone.

Comment about curbside parking for limos, etc.: The curbs along the Hamilton/Emerson corner have been painted white (= passenger loading zone) for decades.

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